Author: Joey deVilla

In which I continue responding to comments or emails sent to me about the blog.

Indian Motorcycle: Back in Business

In the blog entry about the Indian Motorcycle Cafe, I wrote that the actual motorcycle company closed their doors fifty years ago and the brand name is now just used for clothing and night spots. Apparently, that’s not the case — Both Peter van Impelen from the Netherlands and Diane Duane (an American living in Ireland) have pointed out that the Indian Motorcycle Company got back into the business of making motorcycles last year.

Ride on!

Hey, Cory: your ancestral home (Russia) has just hooked up with your spiritual home (Disney theme parks), and there’s a fair use twist too!

Statue of Lenin with Mickey Mouse’s head to be unveiled in Moscow

(Ananova) A life-size statue of Lenin with the head of Mickey Mouse is to go on display in Moscow.

The five foot statue is the work of controversial Russian artist Alexander Kosolapov.

It will be exhibited at an art gallery in the city, reports Pravda.

The artist, who has lived in New York for 20 years, previously won a landmark court battle with Coca Cola after the company objected to his use of their logo in a poster which also featured Lenin.

He said his work celebrates the “heritage of socialist realism”.

As you’re probably aware, I do have a link for comments at the end of each entry of this weblog. As you’re probably also aware, the comments service to which I subscribe often doesn’t work, and when it does work, it often does so very slowly. I am of the “blogs as conversation” school of thought, so with that in mind, I thought I’d highlight or answer some comments that have been posted in the past few days.

Obsessed with high school?

In reponse to Monday, February 17th’s Why Nerds are Unpopular, my friend and former coworker Patrick Lee wrote:

Ok, I held my breath and counted to a large number before posting this… but I have a question- how come people 20 years younger than me (ie Joey) seem so obessed with what went on in High School? I mean, it is only 4 or 5 years out of even a 30 year old life. I am pretty sure that if the categories had existed I would have been a geek, nerd whatever in Grade 11 at least- a few friends sitting at the same cafeteria table decided we should be “nebbishes” which is even lower in Yiddish. But, I graduated, and I honestly don’t think I have spent more than 12 hours since then (counting writing this) thinking about what went on from Grades 9 to 13. So, what’s the big deal?

For the record, in sixteen months of blogging with entries almost every day, making for almost 500 in total, here’s the number of weblog entries I’ve written about my life in high school:

ZERO.

If you count the entries about my snow-cone selling job, which took place on summer vacation from high school, you’d have a grand total of three. Throw in the Why Nerds are Unpopular essay and that makes four. That’s a very teeny percentage out of 500-ish entries.

If writing about a given topic less than one percent of the time qualifies as obsession, it’s time to rewrite Freud’s line as “a cigar is always your father’s penis”.

The article was interesting to me not for the high school aspect, but for these reasons:

• It’s about nerds. I’m interested.
• It’s about social standing, navigating the choppy waters of cliques, social kindnesses and cruelties and the nature of popularity. I also find these interesting.
• This essay was quite a departure from his usual topics. Normally Paul Graham writes about technical matters, such as the Lisp programming language and ways of stopping spam.
• It’s very surprising to read a Paul Graham article that doesn’t make me wish I had a long-distance slapping device. Yes, there are still traces of “I am much smarter than you” in the essay, but he’s nowhere as bad as he used to be.

Getting back to the topic of high school: while it was interesting and formative, life didn’t become really interesting until the summer after high school, it became more so after I switched university degree programs (from electrical engineering to computer science) and even more so after my friend Rob said “I have an old accordion in my basement. Do you want it?”

Simply put, I’ve given more thought to learning the chords to Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi in the past week than I did to high school in the past year. Whether this is a productive use of my leisure time is still up for debate.

My question is: Patrick, what aspects of high school are your friends so obsessed about?

Which Sci-Fi author will you marry? If you choose the first answer for every question, the result will be the science fiction writer I know best. Cory, whoever made this test has the hots for you, I think.

Hey, where’s a test where I’m one of the results? Doesn’t the World’s Most Humble Egomaniac™ deserve one too?

You don’t know Accordion City unless you’ve done these things. I’ve done most of them, having lived here for about 25 years.

The first casuality of war is good manners.

Two hours of busking and less than two quid to show for it? And he’s a good singer/songwriter too. I don’t think he was trying hard enough. These people did better.

Help this guy sound more “street” and he’ll give you twenty bucks. Dat shit is wack, yo. Is this an actor trying to get a gig? A rich white kid trying to impress someone? A cop about to go undercover? A guy who can’t get up enough nerve to buy a FUBU jacket?

8:00 a.m.

I got up, hit the shower, shaved, made breakfast and watched some time-shifted TV. This is how most of my TV watching — perhaps a grand total of three to five hours a week — get done: watching some previous night’s show on videotape over low-carb breakfast. This morning’s TV fare was last week’s Enterprise, in which Captain Archer and company find a mysterious ship that the Suliban and the Tholians want to get their grubby paws on.

9:00 a.m.

Email, then some work on a database application for the funniest clients currently on my roster.

10:25 a.m.

Need for Diet Coke sends me to the store. It’s a bright and sunny day, so I opt to not go to the closest convenience store, but the one at Queen an John. It gives me a chance to walk down Queen Street, which look beautiful in the morning. My good mood becomes even better.

I rap out a few lines of Run-DMC to myself: “I’m the King of Rock.”

11:30 a.m.

I’m coding away on that database application when I’m interrupted by a call by a telemarketer:

Telemarketer: Hello, is this Mr…. Mr…. dah-vee-lah?

Me: Speaking. [I realize it’s a telemarketer as I say this and I’m already trying to find a polite way out.]

Telemarketer: Are you the owner of the house?

Me: [A quick way out!] No, I’m renting it.

Telemarketer: Could you perhaps give me the number of your landlord?

Me: Are you kidding? Give my landlord’s number to a telemarketer? What do you think, I want to get evicted?!

Telemarketer: I never thought of it that way.

Me: That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Hey, can I sell you something? A joke perhaps. The first one’s free…

Telemarketer: Ummm….

Me: What has four legs and digs chicks? Me and my housemate! Thank you very much. I’m here all week. Try the veal, and remember to tip your server. You have a good day.

Telemarketer: Uh, yeah, goodbye…

Click.

I’ve always wanted to do that.

I’m the King of Rock.

12:00 noon

I get a call from my friend Kevin. Kevin left Canada back in 1992 to study at Cambridge, where he subsequently got a job, then got married and lived in the UK until recently. He;s since moved back to Toronto and is now looking for a job. We try to meet up at least once a week. He’s got a job interview downtown and wants to know if I can meet him for coffee somewhere, to which I gladly say yes. We agree to meet at the cafe inside the Indigo bookstore at the Eaton Centre at 2:00 p.m..

12:20 p.m.

I get a call from a contracting firm who says that there’s a nice 6-ish-week programming contract — Visual Basic 6 and ADO — for the government that could be mine. They don’t have VB expertise, they’re a ColdFusion kind of shop. They found my resume online and really liked the application design case studies.

I’m the King of Rock.

How soon can I show up at their office? (Thankfully, it’s not far: I live here and their office is here).

12:25 p.m.

Putting on a royal blue dress shirt, black dress pants, navy blue Steve Jobs-esque vest, black blazer, Rockports. Employers go crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed man.

I’m the King of Rock.

1:00 p.m.

I arrive at the contracting firm’s office. They tell me that the branch of government who needs a programmer is Immigration Canada and that they were burned by the last programmer they hired. He’d used the tactic of a desperate programmer and lied about his Visual Basic programming experience. Even in a down economy, honesty about your skills and experience is the best policy.

The contractor said the client was a bit worried about how much Visual Basic experience I had. “You seemed to downplay it in your resume,” he said, and I explained that it’s not always in one’s best interest to associate yourself with the Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages.

“However, in the end,” I said, “it’s good for a lot of business applications where you want to worry more about the workflow and user-friendliness and less about squeezing the last iota of performance out of the machine or impressing the Slashdot crowd. It’s the programming language that lets you have a life.”

“‘The programming language that lets you have a life.’ I like that. Look, as soon as you’re done with this contract, we might have an even nicer-paying one for you.”

I’m the King of Rock.

They explain to me that they’ve booked a 3:30 p.m. appointment for me with the project manager at Immigration Canada. If they like me, I get the job. I think I can make a good impression, even on such short notice.

2:00 p.m.

Kevin meets me at Indigo and offers to buy me lunch. Since Mom didn’t rasie no fools, I accept.

3:00 p.m.

Lunch ends, and I hop on the subway to go to Immigration Canada’s office at Yonge and St. Clair.

3:30 p.m.

Interview time! First, they show me the program that they want me to work on, after which I show them a couple of applications I’d written using Visual Basic: the database of every mall in America, and the athletic training program used by the Toronto Maple Leafs and Canadian Olympic Ski Team.

The project lead is impressed. The lead programmer is not so easily impressed and throws me some trick questions, which I deflect as a Jedi Master would deflect rubberized weasels hurled at him.

I’m the King of Rock.

“When are you available?” they ask, to which I reply “Tomorrow.”

They say they’ll get back to me.

4:15 p.m.

Back on the subway and now going to Jay Goldman’s house to show him the current state of the control panel application that we’re both working on for an ISP.

5:00 p.m.

At Jay’s place, where I show him the app on my laptop, and he shows me his new pair of Technics 1200 turntables — accept no substitute if you’re a DJ — and spins the Sesame Street album The Count Counts. It’s a classic.

5:10 p.m.

We both get phone calls simultaneously. Jay’s sorting out some kind of Pantone colour problem with a printing company. I’m getting a call from one of the production assistants from the movie Squeezebox, for which I am their accordion consultant.

“Hi, Joey,” Andrea says “We’re doing the bathroom scene and can use your help. Can you be here soon?”

In the scene, the father of a family of accordion superstars has locked himself in the bathroom and isn’t coming out. He’s distraught that his son Brad, who’s tired of polka, has quit the family band (Brad’s the best player, the Jimi Hendrix of the group). Mother (played by Mary-Margaret O’Hara) tries to talk him into coming out of the bathroom and calls her daughter Lolly to cheer him up with an accordion tune. Son is nowhere to ne found; he’s actually in the bedroom next to the bathroom masturbating to fantasies about his sister’s best friend.

It’s a charmingly twisted movie, and the dog gets the best lines.

I’m going to show Jessica, who plays Lolly, enough accordion technique to look convincing on film.

6:00 p.m.

From Church and Dundas to College West and Palmerston by cab. I arrive at an old house, which turns out to have been used for many television, movie and commercial shoots.

One of the behind-the-scenes people — he’s wearing a souvenir t-shirt that says he was on the film crew for Undercover Brother — sees me, still in my interview clothing and says “there goes one sharp-dressed accordion man.”

I’m the King of Rock.

I wait until they need me, during which time I talk to Jim the location manager about his work on Mutant X and on how much work it would take to translate a VB.NET program into REALBasic. I’m called upstairs, where I walk Jessica through some basic techniques (“You want one squeeze per bar, and you want the motion to be smooth”). I watch the shoot, which they do a number of times, from different angles.

The makeup guy asks me why I’m so dressed up and I tell him that it was for a job interview. He asks me what my line of work is, and when I tell him, he informs me that he’s a programmer too. Got his degree from Waterloo. He did programming straight out of school, but then discovered that being a makeup artist is more fun.

7:00 p.m.

Homeward bound. In the cab home, I get a call from the contracting company. The people at Immigration Canada liked me and want to hire me. Can I show up for 10 a.m. tomorrow?

Sure. I’m the King of Rock.

8:00 p.m.

Dinner and Enterprise.

9:00 p.m.

Paul and I do a little guitar-and-accordion practice.

9:15 p.m.

Phone call on my cell, which interrupts practice. Caller ID says it’s the cute girl who’s just come back after being out of town for the past couple of months.

“Gotta take this one, Paul. It’s extremely urgent.”

Well, it is…

10:00 p.m.

A lovely phone call with a lovely person.

I’m the King of Rock.

Practice resumes. Learn a Tom Petty song and Eminem’s Cleaning Out My Closet.

11:00 p.m.

Out to Tortilla Flats for a drink at the Thirsty People of Toronto meeting. Have a lime margarita.

12:10 p.m.

Back home to answer some email and do a little technical reading.

1:00 p.m.

Another chapter of Fast Food Nation, which Jillzilla sent me as a gift! Thanks, Jill! You’re the Queen of Rock!

1:20 p.m.

Contact lenses out, teeth brushed, slip into skin-tight leopardskin-print rubber luge outfit for bed. One of these is not true.

But you know what is true? I’m the King of Rock!

Slight technical correction — see the bottom of this entry

My friend Quinn Norton has given birth to a lovely young girl named Ada T. Norton, who weighed in at a very healthy 8.8 pounds. I believe the baby was named after Lady Ada Lovelace, who — depending on which historical analysis you believe — was either the world’s first programmer or world’s first software and hardware documenter.

Being a house full of geeks deep in the heart of Silicon Valley, they blogged the birth. The best line in that mini-blog goes to Gilbert:

On a completly unrelated note, I’d like to point out to my workplace that this birth was significantly shorter than most internal OSS [Open Source Software] code releases. Perhaps you guys should take a hint or two.

Gilbert fails to appreciate these crucial differences between parents and Open Source programmers:

• With parents, the guy-girl ratio’s pretty even.
• Unlike Open Source projects, with parenting it’s considered bad form to abandon, fork or hand the project over to someone else.
• The maintenance phase of a parenting project is at least 18 years.
• Parents, by definition, have had sex at least once in their lives.

And now, the technical correction

Gilbert writes:

No, foo, not Open Source Software; I’m talking about Operational Systems Software, something that every good telco or ILEC has. It’s most definately NOT open source.

Oops. I haven’t made an acronym boo-boo like that since the one I made with “MILF”: I thought he was talking about those peckerheads, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and he was using it in the American Pie sense: “Mom I’d Like to Fuck”.

I still think the differences between parents and Operational Systems Software programmers still apply, though.

…so it’ll have to wait until later today.

(What is up with Blogger these days? Since their announcement of their buyout by Google, I’ve had problems with them losing my posts.)